Thirteen years after Jack Sparrow made a deal with Davy Jones, to captain the Black Pearl for 13 years, Jones sent Bootstrap Bill Turner to warn Sparrow that his debt had to be paid. During the visit, Turner marked the pirate with the Black Spot, thereby making Jack marked for death. Upon first sight of Sparrow's Black Spot, Joshamee Gibbs, Pintel and Ragetti performed a ritual; patting their shirt pockets five times, spinning one counterclockwise rotation on the spot and spitting on the ground, likely borne from their superstitious natures.

Davy Jones himself removed the Black Spot while allowing Sparrow three days to gather one hundred souls in exchange for his own. The mark instantly returned, without any physical contact from Jones or his crew, after William Turner stole the key to the Dead Man's Chest from aboard the Flying Dutchman. Jones finally settled Sparrow's debt when the pirate captain was dragged down along the Black Pearl to Davy Jones' Locker by the Kraken. By the time Sparrow was rescued along the Pearl from the Locker thanks to his crew, the Black Spot had faded away from Sparrow's hand.

The Black Spot took the appearance of a bubonic plague-like lesion growing on the palm of a victim's hand. It was presumed that any member of Davy Jones' crew could mark a target with the Black Spot, as Bootstrap Bill Turner was sent to mark Jack Sparrow. Davy Jones himself, however, was the only one who could remove it.

The Black Spot was a literary device created by Robert Louis Stevenson for Treasure Island. There, it took the appearance of a circular piece of black paper (presumably cut from the pages of the Bible) or card placed in a victim's hand to officially pronounce a verdict of guilt or judgment.

Ever since Bootstrap Bill gave Jack Sparrow the Black Spot, it always appeared on Sparrow's left hand in Dead Man's Chest.

Athough Davy Jones claimed that Jack Sparrow's debt wasn't paid in At World's End, the Black Spot doesn't appear on Jack's hand. However, this may simply be because the Kraken was no longer alive to pursue him, rendering the Spot's purpose (to attract said beast to its bearer) useless.

In Pirates of the Caribbean Online the player can receive an Evil Curse of Doom, which bares a strong resemblance with the Black Spot. There had never been anything related to this before it shut down, making its use a mystery.

The Black Spot would have played a pivotal role once more in Terry Rossio's original script for Dead Men Tell No Tales, where after the young girl Cora mentions that Jack Sparrow was the only one to ever survive the Black Spot, she reveals that she was given the Black Spot by an individual known as "The Sea Widow" and that she is fated to die at the hands of "one-legged man" or by a sea serpent which is chasing her, implying that Davy Jones was not the only known individual to give Black Spots. It would eventually turn out that Cora herself is the Sea Widow in disguise and the Black Spot was part of her ruse.[1]